This Week I…..

Happy Sunday folks, I hope you’ve got awesome days planned.

Apart from a trip to the supermarket to buy exciting things like, er, bananas, I mostly plan to spend it with my feet under a blanket because this new autumnal weather is making my feet cold.

But before I get started on THAT excitement, this week I….

Ate Some Spicy Chips

If last weeks theme was breakfast, this week seemed to be quite chip-based.

It started on Sunday night when in a fit of “I can’t be bothered to cook” we decided to go to the pub and eat chips instead.

We have ordered these chips before, one of them has Sriracha sauce on it. It’s always been fine, but I think someone might have been a bit heavy-handed this time because they were too spicy even for Mr “I can’t taste anything unless it’s full of spices” LLL.

The bits that weren’t drowned in chilli were lovely, but it might be a while before I have the courage to order that particular dish again.

Hit 200kg on the Leg Press

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A post shared by Gemma (@lipsticklettucelycra) on Sep 4, 2019 at 11:34am PDT

My shoulder injury has been very frustrating, not only impacting my ability to do any upper body stuff at the gym, but also meaning I can’t even do squats properly as it’s too uncomfortable to rest the bar on my shoulders.

Enter the leg press.

Leg press doesn’t really work your core and stability in the same way as a squat, but that means you can add MORE WEIGHT and build some killer leg strength. It’s deeply satisfying to be able to leg press nearly 3 times your own body weight and this weeks 200kg x 4 was a PB for me, but I can definitely do more!

Forgot to Have Lunch

On Tuesday I had to go into the City for a meeting at 1pm. My morning was bit hectic and I forgot to have lunch before I left the house, meaning by the time the meeting finished about 1:30 I was STARVING.

So we had more chips and ate them outside.

These weren’t spicy, but they were very, very delicious.

Picked Up My Prescriptions

I literally had to renew almost every prescription I take this week, and seeing them all there is one go made me laugh.

Isn’t it great to be such a fit and healthy person?

It also made me realise how valuable paying for my prescriptions by Direct Debit is. While I do at least get prescribed 2 of each drug, counting as 1 item. At £9 per item this little lot would still add up to around £36 every 2 months, or £216 a year. So buying a pre-payment certificate currently saves me at least £112 a year, probably more because I also occasionally need a new asthma inhaler.

Consider this a public service announcement in case you too need lots of drugs to function like a normal human being.

For the nosy amongst you, pictured here are my Fluticasone steroid inhaler for my asthma, Montelukast, also for asthma and allergies, Fexofenadine, a prescription antihistamine that I use more commonly in the summer, but also in winter and Ramipril, the exciting new addition to my drug wardrobe that keeps my blood pressure under control, at least until they force me to have a scary procedure that might fix it.

Made a Decision

In other news, this week I made a probably long overdue decision to take an extended break from Roller Derby.

I’ve been playing for over 6 years, but over the last year or so life stresses and injury issues have meant that it has started to become an additional burden on me, rather than a place of escape and joy. Taking the decision to step back was an incredibly hard one, and I’ve spent big chunks of this week crying in full crisis mode.

Will I go back? Who knows? For now I need to take some time to deal with my health and reduce my stress levels and I can revisit everything else in the future.

Took The Pugs Out for Cocktails

In more cheerful news, we made some use of that extra free time to head out for some more Cocktail Week meetings. Norwich Cocktail Week is in early October so at this time of year we spend a lot of time visiting bars to tie-down details of offers and confirm their inclusion.

Sometimes that might include drinking some cocktails, got to get photos for instagram after all…..

Yesterday we also discovered the very satisfying number of bars in the city that let you bring dogs in, as long as they are very cute, anyway.

And that was another week in my life. Not too eventful, but quite full of chips.